To Cloud or Not To Cloud: Part 1

Who isn't mobile these days?  Every coffee shop is filled with texting, laptop connecting, caffeine demanding business men and women.  I love watching all the suits standing online talking with colleagues about a big meeting, responding to early morning emails, checking calendars and contacting their customers.  It's a mobile world, and work is traveling with you.  How many of you can honestly say that within the first ten minutes of waking up you don't check your email?  Yeah, I can't either.

All of us are using the latest technologies, but are we using them to our advantage?  Are we creating more work through these portable devices that were supposed to save us time?  Take this morning's example of the 6:00 AM coffee line where an attorney was calling a colleague to schedule a time to meet a new customer.  "Tim", he said, "I can't see them today, I have a million things to go over back at the office and 5 clients I have to call back.  See if you can postpone it until next week sometime."

We've all done it.  Putting off the new to deal with the old, but that's not what grows a business.  Today, people have little patience.  In the "I need it now" world, who is going to wait when other options are available?  Next week, tomorrow and later drives potential customers to look for "the now" and with the internet it's not hard to find.  So how do we stay on track with building our business, managing our clients more effectively and still maintaining a home life?  With the cloud of course!

A business that runs from the cloud has greater productivity, collaboration and communication than any other business.  Imagine being able to review and approve paperwork from your phone, schedule and attend online meetings from the road, distribute workloads more effectively, automate work processes and finally break free from the chains that keep you tied to your desk.

On The Road Again

Try never leaving the office and see if you can still retain customers or get new ones.  It will never happen.  In an uncertain economy and buyers receiving worse customer services, it’s not a surprise that they demand more for their money.  Balancing in-office workloads with personal services can be difficult but not impossible.  By leveraging a cloud solution to manage work outside the office we can find the time to meet with existing and potential customers.  Attend online meetings over your cell, collaborate on documents with colleagues from a coffee bar or distribute workloads to office staff from your hotel room. 

It’s Not Your IT Guy

So you’ve hired the top Cisco security expert to connect your internal network to the outside world so you can get your emails and calendars?  Nobody could possibly get into your network, right?  Odds are, that top guy and all the equipment required wasn’t quite in your budget.  Let’s face it, your $50 an hour tech guy who is a cousin of your wife’s friend isn’t going to cut it.  That Linksys router your tech guy put in doesn’t make you secure at all.  Going to the cloud means moving your software onto the latest equipment, behind the latest security devices monitored by technicians with the latest training in security and network delivery models.  Your IT guy can’t wait for your next upgrade when he can sell you all the equipment and software and labor.  Move to the cloud and forget ever having to deal with licensing, labor and constant maintenance. 

Is It Secure

Is that Linksys secure? LOL, gotcha!  Yes, it’s secure.  I’ll be honest though, it’s only as secure as your cloud guru’s make it.  That’s why finding the right partner to build your cloud solution is important.  Someone that focuses on secure delivery of information.